Increasing oil prices have heightened the importance of developing cost effective renewable energy. Significant efforts are underway around the world to develop cost effective solar cells to harvest solar energy. In order for solar cells to be cost effective with traditional sources of energy solar cells must be manufactured at a cost well below $1/watt.
Current solar energy technologies can be broadly categorized as crystalline silicon and thin film technologies. Approximately 90% of the solar cells are made from silicon—single crystal silicon or polycrystalline silicon. Crystalline silicon (c-Si) has been used as the light-absorbing semiconductor in most solar cells, even though it is a relatively poor absorber of light and requires a considerable thickness (several hundred microns) of material. Nevertheless, it has proved convenient because it yields stable solar modules with good efficiencies (13-18%, half to two-thirds of the theoretical maximum) and uses process technology developed from the knowledge base of the microelectronics industry. Silicon solar cells are very expensive with manufacturing cost above $3.50/watt. Manufacturing is mature and not amenable for cost reduction.
Second generation solar cell technology is based on thin films. Main thin film technologies are amorphous Silicon, Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS), and Cadmium Telluride (CdTe).
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) was viewed as the “only” thin film PV material in the 1980s. But by the end of that decade, and in the early 1990s, it was written off by many observers for its low efficiencies and instability. However, amorphous silicon technology has made good progress toward developing a very sophisticated solution to these problems: multijunction configurations. Now, commercial, multijunction a-Si modules in the 7-9% efficiency range are being produced by several companies. A number of companies such as Kaneka, Sharp, Schott Solar, Ersol, etc., are manufacturing amorphous silicon solar cells on glass substrates by adopting commercially proven CVD process to deposit a-Si originally developed for flat panel display manufacturing. Equipment companies such as Applied Materials are offering turn-key systems to manufacture a-Si solar cells on glass substrates. The key obstacles to a-Si technology are low efficiencies, light-induced efficiency degradation (which requires more complicated cell designs such as multiple junctions), and process costs (fabrication methods are vacuum-based and fairly slow). United Solar has pioneered triple junction a-Si solar cells on flexible stainless steel substrates. However, a-Si solar cells are expensive to manufacture (>$2.5/watt).
Thin film solar cells made from Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide (CIGS) absorbers show promise in achieving high conversion efficiencies of 10-12%. The record high efficiency of CIGS solar cells (19.9% NREL) is by far the highest compared with those achieved by other thin film technologies. These record breaking small area devices have been fabricated using vacuum evaporation techniques which are capital intensive and quite costly. A number of companies (Honda, Showa Shell, Wurth Solar, Nanosolar, Miasole etc.) are developing CIGS solar cells on glass substrates and flexible substrates. However, it is very challenging to fabricate CIGS thin films of uniform composition on large area substrates. This limitation also affects the process yield, which are generally quite low. Because of these limitations, implementation of evaporation techniques has not been successful for large-scale, low-cost commercial production of CIGS solar cells. It is extremely unlikely that CIGS solar cells can be produced below $1/watt manufacturing cost.
CdTe thin film solar cells are very simple to make and have the potential to achieve lowest manufacturing cost compared to all other solar cell technologies. CdTe solar cells with 16.5% efficiency have been demonstrated by NREL. First Solar based in Arizona is producing CdTe solar cells on glass substrates at a manufacturing cost of $1.12/watt. First Solar expects to reduce the cost to below $1/watt by the end of 2009 when it ramps up its annual manufacturing capacity to 1 GW. Further reduction in manufacturing cost of CdTe solar cells is not readily achievable because of relatively slow piece by piece manufacturing process.
The prior art makes CdTe solar cells by depositing CdTe on 3 mm thick glass substrates and encapsulated with a second 3 mm cover glass. Hence they are produced by a slow piece by piece manufacturing process. Further reduction in manufacturing cost of CdTe solar cells to well below $1/watt is not readily achievable because of slow piece by piece manufacturing process. These CdTe solar cells are also very heavy and cannot be used for residential rooftop applications—one of the largest market segments of solar industry. Opportunity exists to innovate by developing CdTe solar cell on flexible substrate that can be manufactured by a continuous roll to roll process to significantly reduce manufacturing cost. Flexible solar cells will also be light weight making them suitable for residential roof top applications which are not accessible to CdTe on heavy glass substrates.
Conventionally CdTe solar cells are manufactured in a superstrate configuration with transparent substrates such as glass substrates. Substrate configuration is required when opaque substrates such as flexible metal foil substrates are used for high volume production of CdTe devices. This change in device configuration necessitates a substantial deviation from the conventional back contact formation.
To improve electrical contact between CdTe and the electrode material in superstrate CdTe solar cells, a film of ZnTe has been deposited on CdTe using traditional physical vapor deposition means, Studies of ZnTe Back Contacts to CdS/CdTe Solar Cells T. A. Gessert, P. Sheldon, X. Li, D. Dunlavy, D. Niles, R. Sasala, S. Albright and B. Zadler. Presented at the 26th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, September 29B. October 1997, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Another solution to improving the contact between CdTe compounds and various electrode materials in superstrate devices is by depositing copper-doped ZnTe onto CdTe, see “Development of Cu-doped ZnTe as a back-contact interface layer for thin-film CdS/CdTe solar cells.” T. A. Gessert, A. R. Mason, P. Sheldon, A. B. Swartzlander, D. Niles, and T. J. Coutts. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films May 1996 Volume 14, Issue 3, pp. 806-812, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The difficulty in providing ohmic contacts to Group II-VI semiconductor absorber films is due to its high work function as there are no metals available with work function higher than CdTe. In the prior art this problem is circumvented by forming pseudo-ohmic contacts which requires treating a Group II-VI semiconductor surface with various chemical etchants. Chemical etching methods are difficult to control and if uncontrolled have the potential to etch grain boundaries of the absorber semiconductor which can reduce the efficiency of the solar cells. In a substrate configuration solar cell, a thin layer cannot be created by the prior art treatment of Group II-VI semiconductor compound layer surfaces, since the Group II-VI semiconductor compound layer is deposited after the metal deposition and not accessible for such treatment. Accordingly there is a need for an improved solar cell having increased efficiency due to the improved ohmic contact between the absorber layer and the metal electrode layer.